Afghanistan what a shithole 6 more dead today

[Zorro]

Arginald Valleywater, you cannot compare the Vietnam war with this war.

In the Vietnam War America alone lost 58,000 soldiers dead, and god knows how many injured and maimed.

Yes this war is pointless, and any loss of life terrible, but come on get the facts right before making sweeping statements like "Afghanistan makes Vietnam look like a food fight".

It is important to get a soldiers view of the war and what it is like, I recommend the following books:

An Ordinary Soldier by Doug Beattie MC

his follow up book on his second tour Task Force Helmand by Doug Beattie

3 Para by Patrick Bishop

All are great books and give a superb insight into what our troops are doing and how they feel about it.

[spider]

"It is important to get a soldiers view of the war and what it is like."

Why?

We should have got out of there years ago.

It's debatable whether we should ever have been there, fighting the Yanks war for them, in the first place.

[Robches]

The soldiers were killed in a Warrior APC. It's a good vehicle in most respects, but it has a flat bottom and is thus not mine resistant. Modern mine protected vehicles such as the Mastiff have V shaped hulls, and have survived 100kg mine blasts. Sadly, once again British soldiers have died because the top brass cannot get their act together to give them the right equipment. I would not even blame the politicians on this, they are guided by their military advisers, and these people just seem to be unable to get things sorted. The amount of institutional inertia at the MoD has to be seen to be believed.

[spider]

If the MOD were to place an order for a number of "Mastiffs" today at what a million, a million and a half each vehicle, what would the lead in time be for delivery?

Eighteen months, two years?

We are out of there in 2014.

Talk earlier in this thread about "towelheads melting away into the night".

What would you do if your country was invaded by a better trained, better equipped foreign army?

[Robches]

That's the point, we have been there for years, and soldiers are still getting killed in unsuitable equipment. No doubt the MoD wallahs will still get their gongs, so no worries on that score. This should have been sorted years ago!

[Gusset Sniffer]

Maybe they should take their employers to court for not providing adequate health and safety equipment? But I guess they are considered cannon fodder?
Pure sods!

[spider]

What was the reason for buying Warriors in the first place, if they can be knocked out by mines?

[David Johnson]

There is no way that you can make a land vehicle totally impregnable to IEDs. Warriors have survived many IED explosions. THis seems to have been an absolutely massive explosion.

The issue here is not about why Warriors but about why Afghanistan as you rightly point out, Spider. The Americans have one of the best equipped armies in the world, yet they have lost 1500 men in Afghanistan.

[Robches]

spider wrote:

> What was the reason for buying Warriors in the first place, if
> they can be knocked out by mines?

The Warrior was designed for combat on the North German Plain in the event of World War 3, to move soldiers rapidly round the battlefield, whilst giving them armour protection and the covering fire of a 30mm gun. It was not designed for routine patrolling in an IED infested counter-insurgency war. There are such vehicles, the Mastiff is one of them, it was specifically designed to be mine resistant, and if the six soldiers had been in one, they would probably have survived. That's why I get angry when I see top brass like Dannatt crying crocodile tears in these situations. He had the power to order these vehicles, and he didn't, because he was wedded to his own pet theories of what vehicles the army should need.

[spider]

What we are saying then is that the British Army is still equipped to fight a late 20th Century War.

May be our political leaders need to consider this next time they step forward to say they are going to fight the Yanks 21st Century Wars for them.